Pebbles
by WestwardGlance
Summary: Sabine tries to knock some sense into Ezra post-Malachor. She's come prepared. Born out of a challenge, this short story was written in one hour's time.


_**Authors Note:**_ So SweetSinger2010, Ddaulton94, and I did a weird thing. We did a challenge where we gave each other a prompt and only had one hour to write it. Oh boy. That was hard. SweetSinger2010 gave me Ezra and Sabine post-Malachor, not knowing that that was something I had been specifically avoiding. Oh well. So this is the short little story I cooked up in one hour time. I hope you enjoy. It was a fun little experiment to try to compose and put together something even remotely legible in only an hour!

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 ** _Pebbles_**

Ezra walked back towards the Ghost. He'd spent the last two hours debriefing with Sato on their disaster of a mission to Malachor. Thank the Force Hera had pulled some strings and convinced Sato to let the debriefing wait a week. If he had had to sit in Sato's office immediately after returning, Ezra wasn't sure he'd even still be on Atallon; he may have packed up and headed back to Lothal.

Even so, it was pretty awful. Hera had insisted that Ezra tell Sato as much as possible, including telling him about Maul and Vader. "Ezra, Maul may still be out there. Commander Sato needs to understand what sort of threat we're up against if he comes back for us."

"Fine, fine I'll tell him. I'll just go ahead and tell everyone about how I screwed everything up. That's exactly what I need right now." Ezra hadn't meant to lash out at Hera, but it seemed to come naturally at the moment. Right now all he wanted was to go back to his bunk and forget that the last few weeks had ever happened. If Zeb was on duty, he might even be able to get some sleep.

Ezra looked up to where the Ghost was parked on one of Chopper Base's landing pads. There it stood, silhouetted against the sun. And sitting outside of it on a crate and probably waiting for Hera? Kanan, eyes still bandaged. Sitting around doing nothing, like he always was since getting back from Malachor. Ezra sighed as the guilt rose up and threatened to choke him. Maybe the Ghost wasn't such a good idea right now. Making a sudden turn, he went to go… Somewhere. He wasn't sure and didn't really care.

Ezra walked for a few minutes and came to the edge of the coral plateau. He sat on the edge and dangled his legs over the side. Part of him knew that meditating would probably help him right now, but Ezra didn't even want to think about the Force. He didn't want to think of anything that would remind him of Malachor. Of Kanan.

Of the Sith Holocron.

Suddenly a pebble bounced off the back of his head. Probably Zeb or one of those know-it-all pilots. Or worse still Chopper. He spun, angry, and lashed out, "Hey, what was that… Oh."

Sabine. Not the person he was expecting to see. He turned back to the sunset, a little embarrassed. He hadn't really spoken with Sabine since getting back and, well, he wasn't sure that now was a good time either.

Another pebble bounced off the back of my head. Ezra spun back around. "Alright, what is it? What do you want?" He didn't know why he was lashing out at her like this, and he felt the guilt start to rise again.

"What, you don't want to see me? That's a first." Sabine said grimly with arms crossed.

"Look… I… It's been a bad couple weeks." Ezra looked down ashamed. "I… Uh.. shouldn't have snapped at you…"

"Obviously, but you've been acting kind of dumb lately, so I thought I'd use a couple rocks to knock some sense into you." Sabine smiled and bounced another pebble off of Ezra's skull.

Ezra rubbed his head where she'd just hit him. That one would probably actually leave a mark. "Okay, fine, fine. You've got my attention."

Sabine walked over to the ledge and sat, dangling her legs off the side. She didn't say anything at first, and Ezra began to grow suspicious. "Who sent you? Kanan or Hera?"

Sabine turned and eyed him. "I came on my own, thank you very much. I'm allowed to be worried about my fellow Specters aren't I?"

Ezra pursed his lips and was quiet for a minute. "Yeah, you are. I'm sorry."

Sabine laughed. "You should be. Look. I live across the hall from you, and I don't need this much drama next door. No one blames you for what happened. None of us. And the sooner you stop blaming yourself, the sooner we all get our teammate back."

Ezra rubbed the back of his head nervously. He wasn't expecting her to be this blunt, but it felt good, to be honest. "And what about Kanan?"

"He'll come around. I hope." Sabine paused and threw a rock over the cliff. "Hera believes he will, so I'm going to choose to believe she's right."

Ezra laughed. It was a thin laugh and felt a little forced, but it was better than nothing. "Well, I'm pretty sure she's the expert on Kanan."

Sabine grimaced. "Nope. We aren't talking about that."

"Yeah, that's a no from me too." They were quiet again, and Sabine tossed another small rock over the edge. Ezra frowned for a moment and looked at Sabine. "How…? How many rocks did you bring to throw at me?"

She opened a pouch on her hip and dumped at least twenty small stones out onto the ground between them. Ezra's mouth dropped open, and he stared at the stones before glancing nervously upward at Sabine.

She just shrugged. "Look, I've missed you, and I was going to keep going till I got your attention."

Ezra glanced back down at the stones and licked his lips. "So you were going to keep braining me until you got me to talk…?"

Sabine laughed, and Ezra felt that little tickle run down his spine. He would never get tired of hearing her laugh. Something inside him smiled: she had sought him out. That was pretty rare.

"Ezra, I was going to put you in the infirmary, if that's what it took."

"Right," Ezra said nervously trying to get his head back out of the clouds. "Mandalorian."

Sabine nodded. "Mandalorian, and don't you forget it."

Ezra gave her the best crooked smile he could manage. "That would probably get me killed, Sabine."

She just nodded smugly and kept throwing rocks. Ezra looked out at the sunset one last time. He wasn't ready to face Kanan yet. And he certainly wasn't prepared to admit to anyone that he'd managed to open the Sith Holocron, but it was nice to know someone still cared.

"Oh and umm… Thanks, Sabine."

"Anytime, Ezra." She bounced another pebble off of Ezra's head.

"Would you stop that?!" He grumbled.

"Not until you're you again," Sabine said simply. She scooped the rest of her pebbles back into her pouch stood and walked back towards the base. "I'll be keeping these for later," she said mischievously.

Ezra watched her walk away, silhouetted by the lights of the base. He scratched his chin thoughtfully and sighed. Standing he brushed the dirt off his pants. "Wait," he called out to Sabine. "I'm coming. I'm coming." The Force pinged in the back of his mind, and he dodged the rock that flew towards him out of the twilight.

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And there it was. A short little fic born out of a Saturday evening challenge. Don't forget to check out ddaulton94's story "The Prank" and SweetSinger2010's story "The Mask"

You'll get exactly what you'd expect from those two as well: humor from ddaulton94 and amazing Hera from SweetSinger2010.  
Thanks and let me know what you think!


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